Monster (24 page)

‘Regan, go and get help,’ I ordered her. ‘Back door. Just run. Get as far away from here as you can.’

Oven cleaner and lighter still clutched tightly in my hands, I sprinted, barely any breath left, back down the corridor with no thought to where I was going. I could still hear Charlie screaming behind me.

‘You’re DEAD. Bitch, you hear me, you are a DEAD. GIRL. WALKING.’

His words were following, echoing, closing in. I could keep running, but where would I run to?

The dorms. It had to be the dorms. I knew my way around the school—right now, that was the only thing on my side. I sprinted up the stairs, two steps at a time, and fled along
the corridor. Our dorm-room door was closed. Now I heard him coming up the stairs, shouting and screeching after me.

‘Where are you, bitch? I’m gonna have you!’

Without thinking, halfway along the landing, I ducked into the airing cupboard and silently closed the door.

Footsteps along the corridor. My skin was alive with prickles. In the close confines of the airing cupboard, my breathlessness sounded so loud and obvious. I covered my mouth with a small pile of pillowcases. He was creeping about. I could see his shadow through the slats in the cupboard door.

‘Just come out, will you?’ said Charlie’s voice, closer than ever now. He was right outside. ‘This is getting really boring.’

Did he know I was in here? Would he try the door?

I heard the rattle of a doorknob, but it wasn’t the airing cupboard knob. It was one across the corridor. Prefect Dorm Two. The handle rattled louder. There was a thump. He was kicking it. Harder.

‘Come on, Natasha, you know I’ll get in eventually.’

No way would he open it. The doors up here were too heavy and thick. Except my airing cupboard door; he could have kicked that one in, easily. It was thin. It had slats. And I was right there on the other side of it. I had to get further inside, back behind the boiler. I scrabbled my way back through the piles of blankets and sheets and tablecloths. Once I was ensconced behind the boiler, I piled everything up around me. It was a mess. But at least I was hidden.

Bang bang bang.
He was at my door now. The handle rattled. A wide band of light flooded in. He was inches away now. Sniffing the air, as though he could smell me. I
could smell him. I could smell BO and the vague scent of burnt hair.

‘Nash?’ His voice was softer now. I cupped my mouth with my hand again to swallow my breathing. ‘Nash. I don’t know what I’m doing. I need you. Help me. I love you.’

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know if my heart was still beating. Then all of a sudden his voice seemed to sing out:

‘I’m gonna cut your head off when I find you, Natasha. I swear to God. I’m gonna take my time with you. You’re going to feel everything.’

My body froze at the sound of his unnaturally matter-of-fact voice. A door slammed and his footsteps pumped back along the corridor. I let out my breath into a stack of clean gym socks.

I still had the can of oven cleaner and the lighter in my pocket, but the can felt empty. I needed something else. I clicked on the little light pull to ignite the small bulb and looked around me. There was nothing but sheets and blankets and spare uniform piles as far as the eye could see. The shelving units groaned under the weight of it all. I spotted one thing, the only thing that might come in useful, on the second shelf up. A small box of biological washing powder. I reached up and took it, snatching up a large handful into my cardigan pocket. It would have to do for now. I had to get out of there. I had to find Tabby and Maggie. I had to get help.

I clicked off the light and silently opened the airing cupboard door, closing it carefully behind me and checking the corridor, up and down. No sign of anyone. I was completely on my own. I started quickly back down the landing, one
hand in my pocket the whole way. I could smell him. I could smell his burning hair.

The smell disappeared at the top of the staircase, which meant he had gone downstairs. I jiggled the knob on the door marked ‘PRIVATE’, which took me along to the Saul-Hudsons’ apartments and the front staircase. I could see the front door.

But between me and freedom were the stairs. And a body lying there. Like a butterfly Charlie had crushed beneath his shoe.

Clarice Hoon. Her blood was all up the wall. Unlike Matron, her eyes were closed. I knelt down beside her head and robotically felt for her pulse, just to be sure. No movement. No breath. Her skin was cold. Many a time I’d wished Clarice would just disappear. Now I’d have given anything for her to wake up. She looked quite beautiful. A painted lady.

A bang in the corridor to the kitchens. I sprang to my feet. He was coming. He would find me. I couldn’t make it up the stairs, and I couldn’t get out through the front door without a key. I was trapped. He would see me and kill me and I would die there, next to Clarice.

And then I had a thought.

‘Clarice,’ I said, and in a flash I knew where to go. I had just enough time to get down the remaining stairs and into Mrs Saul-Hudson’s office, closing the door behind me. I could bolt it from the inside too—so I did. I looked around. Untidy shelves. Papers all over the desk, in large messy stacks. I’d told Clarice to lock all the windows the night Matron went missing, but I knew beyond doubt she wouldn’t have gone in the Headmistress’s office. No way would she have voluntarily gone in there. I climbed across the desk and jumped down the other side, leaning across to lift up
the pane. It flew up like a bride’s dress and a rush of cold air greeted my face from outside.

‘Thank you, thank you, thank you,’ I muttered, clambering out just as the door to the office began to
bang bang bang.

I closed the window behind me. I didn’t have a clue where I was going or what I was doing. I just knew I had to run, fight and keep fighting until someone came. Anyone came. Someone would come, eventually. I had to believe it.

But then the voice returned—the one I thought had left me.

There’s nowhere else to run. You have to hide.

I was running past the Reference Library window. The Hidey. I could get to the Hidey behind the encyclopedias. If the window was open, I could get to it in time. Charlie didn’t know they were there.

I climbed onto the hedge and tried the window, but it was locked tight. Without another thought, I jumped down and grabbed a large pebble from the flower bed, hurling it at the pane, which shattered completely.

‘Knowledge is Power’ said the sign outside the door. Maybe the books would save me.

But he had heard the breaking glass.

And he was at the door before I’d jumped down from the window.

His face was red and peeling from the fire, his blond hair burnt at the fringe and smoke-blackened. I held the can up again, threatening him with it.

‘There you are,’ he snarled, stepping closer to me, knowing I was cornered. The Hidey was out of the question now. He’d follow me in, and then I would die in complete darkness. I fumbled into my left pocket for the oven cleaner. I
pressed down on the squirt and lit the flame again, holding it in front of me like before.

‘Don’t come near me or I’ll light you up again,’ I warned through ragged breaths.

‘I don’t care,’ he said. He closed the door behind him and walked towards me. ‘I’m going to slice you into ribbons.’

The flame burned and roared in front of me like a dragon’s breath—and suddenly burnt out. Now I had nothing. I shook the can. Empty. I threw it at him. He batted it away with his free hand like he was swatting a butterfly. My hand dived into my left pocket for the washing powder. I threw it at him. It completely missed. His knife hand rose.

I threw the lighter at him. It missed. Still he kept coming. Then I went for the books. Encyclopedias. Big heavy dictionaries and atlases. Book after book after book after book I launched at him. Overarm. Underarm. Over my shoulder. I threw with all my might.

Go down fighting.

Some bounced straight off his body. Some he batted away. Some he slashed at with the knife in mid-air. One hit him square in the face. But still he kept coming and coming at me, until he was on me and the knife was raised and his free hand was on my shoulder to steady me as—

‘GET BACK FROM HER, YOU BASTARD,’ shouted a voice behind us. He whipped his head round and found Maggie standing there, as if appearing from a puff of smoke, a javelin raised in her fist, pointed straight at his face. She’d emerged from the Hidey.

There was no warning. Charlie faced her, stepped forward with his knife raised, and with one quick movement Maggie plunged the javelin deep into his thigh.

‘AARRGGHHH—JESUS!’ he cried, backing off.

Maggie steadied herself against the bookcase as he writhed in agony, wrenching the spear from his leg and flinging it across the room towards the door. ‘How’s that for a prank, bitch?’ she yelled at him.

I didn’t even have time for relief. Charlie was on his feet again before I could say a word. As straight as he could manage, he raised his knife again and dived at Maggie, sticking it straight into her belly as far as it would go. I heard the dull thump of it going in.

The sound of my own scream petrified me to the spot.

She made a gurning noise as he stabbed her. She didn’t scream. It was like the knife had zipped up her breath and forced it back inside her throat. She slid down the bookcase and hit the floor hard on her bottom. The knife stuck out of her stomach, buried up to the hilt.

Then Charlie turned back to me, his red face contorted in pain, and grabbed me by the neck. His grip was so tight.

Go for the vulnerable parts of the body. Throat.

I punched out at his Adam’s apple. He coughed and drew away. I tried to scurry away, but he grabbed my hair and pulled me face down to the floor. He was on my back.

Headbutt.

I jerked my head back as hard as I could. As it made contact with his face, he yelped and I struggled free, just for a second. But I couldn’t get my footing on the polished floor, and then he was back, turning me to face him, lying on top of me, all his weight pressed against me.

‘You’ll enjoy this, I promise,’ he whispered.

Eyes.

I pressed my thumb against his eyeball until I felt the soft jelly give under my touch.

‘Arghhh!’

Nose. Up to the nose with the heel of your hand.

I grabbed and yanked and punched what I could. But it was no use. He got his hands around my neck again and again and held me down.

Knee him in his crotch.

I couldn’t get to it. I couldn’t move my legs at all. He had me pinned.

Hit him. Bite him. Pinch him. Grab him. Slap him. Don’t. Ever. Stop.

He pulled my head up and brought it back down, hard, to the floor. Again and again, squeezing the breath from my throat at the same time. I could feel myself slipping away, no breath coming, an iron grip around my throat. Something dug into my leg. I was dying.

‘I really fancy you,’ he said, his voice sounding almost as strangled as mine. ‘We could still have some fun, though you won’t have much say in it.’

All my breath had left me. I couldn’t contend. I was disappearing down a well and had no strength left. Nothing to fight for.

‘You struggle too much, Nash. Look on the bright side. You can join your brother now, can’t you? He’s dead, now, Nash. Remember, he told you he wasn’t going to make it.’

It was
him.
On the phone. Pretending.

Not Seb. Charlie.

Something was digging hard into my leg.

Seb hadn’t phoned. That hadn’t happened. It was
him.

I knew what it was now. I got my hand underneath my cardigan to my tunic pocket and fumbled for it. I found it. I pulled it out. The pencil.

Seb not dying. Still hope.

I got it into my fist. Drew it out. Drew it away. Drew it
back. Drove it hard, fast, right into the side of his neck with a glorious squelching punch. I wasn’t on target. But it was enough. Deep enough.

His blood spouted straight into my face, into my eyes, my mouth, but the pressure on my neck released and I gasped in as much air in as I could, pushing him back with all my might. He stumbled and fell, scuffling backwards along the blood-soaked rug, half the pencil still jutting out of his neck.

I spat every fluid from my mouth and coughed as I stood up. I walked over to him. I looked down. He was gasping for air. I bent to his level, not looking at his face, and untied Babbitt from his belt. Then I stood up again. His free arm reached out for me, but I slapped it away, pulling my pencil out with a spray of blood and a sickening
pop.
He gasped. I put Babbitt in my tunic pocket and went over to sit beside Maggie. I picked up her hand. She looked at me, scared.

‘Jesus, Nash.’ Her hand shuddered over the knife sticking from her belly.

‘No. Leave it in,’ I said. My voice didn’t sound like mine.

It was only then that I heard the sirens.

I
t was Tabby who’d saved us.

She had run from Charlie to the Hidey at the back of the gym, and gone straight up to the dorms and she’d stayed there and bided her time until she heard the library window breaking. Then she’d gone back through the Hidey and arrived at Sickbay. It was there, on a shelf on the wall, that she’d found the plastic carrier bag full of our mobile phones, hidden there by Matron. She called the police herself and said the bad man had a knife, told them the address, and they’d come running. They’d all come running.

I don’t remember much of what happened between sitting with Maggie in the library and being brought outside. I think I must have blacked out, like I did when I ‘attacked’ Clarice in the Chapel. How long ago that was now. Some
policemen came in, wearing vests and brandishing guns. There were shouts. People talked to me. People talked
at
me. I stayed in my bubble, not really hearing them or feeling them as they poked and prodded and covered my shoulders with a foil blanket. I told them Leon was in the French room cupboard. I definitely told them that. Then they cleared me out of the library.

By the time I got outside, it was early in the morning on Christmas Eve, and there were flashing lights everywhere. Police cars, vans and ambulances met my eyes at every turn. Bustle, noise and scratchy receivers barking orders from every shoulder.

I sat on the back of an ambulance, wrapped in my foil cape and staring at the lights until my eyes stung and watered. Tabby was in the back of another ambulance, sitting next to Brody, who was chewing a stick. Two police officers sat with them. Tabby was cuddling Babbitt and one of the policewomen was reading her a story. I kept looking down at my hands, thinking about what they did. How they’d killed someone. How I’d become a monster to kill another.

Another woman was asking me questions. A policewoman. I hadn’t really seen her face. She had short dark hair and talked in a Scottish accent. I didn’t know if I was answering her correctly. I was just watching the school. Watching the dusting of snow on the roof beginning to melt away as though it had never been there. Watching the front door as the stretchers were brought out.

First Clarice. I saw her red hair, dangling like a theatre curtain beneath the sheet covering her face.

Then came Leon, sitting up, his hand cuffed to the metal rung under the bed. I stood up.

The Scottish policewoman’s voice. ‘Nash, come back.
Nash, you need to sit down, you’ve had a terrible shock.’ I kept walking towards the stretcher. ‘You need to stand aside, please.’

‘Leon.’

‘Nash,’ he said, his face brightening. ‘I’m gonna be all right. Where’s Dianna?’

‘I don’t know, Leon. I don’t know.’

‘Miss,’ said a tall dark policeman, with a beard this time, ‘we need to get him to the hospital now.’

I looked at the policeman. ‘He saved me. If it wasn’t for him, I’d be dead.’

‘All right, all right.’

‘No, listen to me,’ I said, grabbing the bearded policeman’s arm and not letting go. ‘You need to take that into account. I know he escaped, I know he did bad things before, but here—he did good things here. He didn’t hurt anyone and he saved my life. Please.’

‘You just tell that to the lady there then, all right? We’ll make sure it’s all noted down. She’ll look after you.’

The policeman gently moved me to one side as the bed continued past me. Leon winked, mouthing
Thanks
, before closing his eyes and being rolled off towards a ramp at the back of one of the waiting ambulances. As the bed passed me, I could have sworn I’d seen a tear fall down the side of his face to the sheet.

‘Nash?’ said the Scottish policewoman again. She adjusted the foil cape around my shoulders again. I hadn’t even realised it had come off. ‘Let’s go back to the ambulance now, okay? The paramedics are waiting to have a look at your neck.’

‘I want to see Maggie.’

‘They’ll bring her out in a minute. We’ll wait for her in the ambulance, shall we? Where it’s warm?’

‘No,’ I said, more firmly. ‘I’m waiting here for Maggie.’

‘Okay, well—you just keep that cape around you then.’

Two ambulances started down the driveway and police milled around in the empty spaces they’d left. Making calls. Talking about the news crews. Setting up caution tape. I looked at the white school minibus. Some cops were already marking where blood had been found. I heard two of them mention ‘the boy in the library’ and ‘twenty-seven separate wounds’, but I didn’t make the connection then. Other policemen were taking an empty stretcher down the path to the Orangery lawn where I’d told them I’d found Matron. I looked back to the front door. Waiting for Maggie.

‘Will you at least let them clean your face?’ said the Scottish voice again.

‘What’s wrong with my face?’ I said, not taking my eyes off the front door.

‘Well, it’s a little bit messy. Let’s just go and do that, shall we?’

I let her guide me back to the ambulance where a paramedic was waiting with some sort of medical wet wipe. I caught sight of my face in the wing mirror. My entire head was covered in dry blood. My blue eyes stared out. My vision went, momentarily, as a giant wet wipe was smeared across my face. The wipe came away red but the paramedic hid it quickly in a plastic bag and fished out another one, doing the same again.

‘Where has all that blood come from?’ I heard my voice say. ‘Did he get me?’

‘No,’ said the woman. ‘This is his blood. Okay, if you
just sit down there, my love, so we can take a look at you. That’s it, thank you.’

‘His blood?’

The other paramedic started checking all round my neck. I felt it then. The soreness. The searing pain in my throat and my collarbone. It killed.

‘Oww.’

‘It’s okay, you’ve just got a bit of bruising there. Nothing serious.’

‘Nothing serious,’ I repeated. It still didn’t sound like my voice. I’d forgotten what I was meant to sound like.

I heard a rattling and a gaggle of people came out of the front door, followed by the next stretcher. Maggie.

I shook off the two paramedics and rushed towards her. I couldn’t see her for people—she was shrouded in policemen and women and ambulance crews. I couldn’t see if the sheet covered her face or not. I barged my way through the throng of bodies, and then I saw her face. Her brown eyes—open, beautifully alive.

‘All right, Nasher the Flasher?’ she said, her voice scratchy and one eye closed. ‘Nice necklace.’

She meant the purple choker where Charlie’s hands had tried to squeeze the life from my body just an hour before. I put my hand to my throat and winced in pain again. It was then that I looked down her body and saw the hilt of Charlie’s knife sticking out of her belly, a cluster of blood-soaked wadding all around it. My own stomach turned over at the sight.

‘You did it, Nash. You slew the dragon.
Tu est … magnifique.
’ She felt around at her side for my hand and I grabbed it and held it tightly.

‘We slew the dragon,’ I said.

‘No, I didn’t get close. I missed him. You went to town on the bastard. He looks like Swiss cheese in there.’ Her voice was getting weaker. She groaned with the effort of talking.

Twenty seven separate wounds
, I kept thinking. I wanted to know what she meant, but she was fading. ‘You got him, Maggie. You got him.’

The bed didn’t stop moving so we couldn’t talk properly. I walked alongside her. ‘We didn’t watch
Con Air
,’ she mumbled.

‘Another time,’ I told her. ‘I’ll find out which hospital they’re taking you to and I’ll bring it in for us to watch there. Okay?’

She nodded. ‘I’d like that.’

‘Are you going to be all right?’

‘Yeah. I’ll survive. Worse luck for Saul-Hudson, eh? Back in this dump next term. Well, might take a bit longer, I dunno.’ She winced. ‘I’m all right. They got good drugs, you should get some. Nice.’ Her eyes started to close.

‘Maggie …’ I tailed off, then started again. ‘You’re a true friend.’

She started laughing. Really laughing. And then crying, from the pain the laughter was causing. ‘Aww, sorry, that just sounded so wet.’

I tugged her hair gently. ‘Oi you, I was trying to have a moment there.’

‘Let’s get two of those naff necklaces from Argos. “BFFs Forevs”.’ Her eyes closed again.

I tried to laugh. We’d arrived at the ramp of the ambulance. ‘I’ll see you soon, okay?’

She nodded. Though her eyes were watery, no tears escaped. Typical Maggie. The stretcher started to move again, up the ramp and away she went. Once again, I was guided
back to my ambulance, where the paramedic was still waiting with his wipe.

Then the Scottish policewoman, whose name, I learned, was Krissy, asked me questions. Loads of questions. I told her everything I could, from the beginning. I told her how I’d found Matron. How Dianna had kept Seb’s letter from me and how everyone had shouted at her and she’d disappeared. How Charlie was on some antipsychotic drugs. I told them what he’d told me—how he had killed them all. The man in the village. The two tourists in the summer. Matron. Clarice. Probably Dianna too. How he left them in the forest for the Beast to eat.

‘What about Clarice’s and Matron’s families?’

‘Someone’s informing them,’ said the policewoman. She had told me her name but I’d forgotten it already. Krissy, that was it.

‘My parents are abroad, but they were due back today. I know their mobiles …’

‘We’ll call them, don’t worry. We’ll call them all. You just concentrate on yourself right now, okay? Let’s get you sorted.’

Another tinkling in the distance. The wheels of the last stretcher.

Charlie. A white sheet over his face.

I stayed sitting as they wheeled him straight up into another ambulance and slammed the doors.

‘You’re the hero, don’t forget that.’

‘Huh?’ I said, snapping out of my daze and looking at the policewoman’s face. ‘I’m not a hero. I’m a killer.’

‘You saved your friends’ lives. You saved your own.’

I didn’t even feel the cold when my foil cape slipped off my shoulders again and Krissy had to put it back on. Her
radio crackled on her shoulder and she spoke into it. I heard the words ‘body’ and ‘lane’.

I knew it was Dianna.

‘They’ve found her, haven’t they?’ I said. She didn’t answer.

‘Okay, Sarge. I’ll let them know.’ She looked at me. ‘Yeah. In one of the lanes about two miles away from here in Bathory village. In a phone box.’

‘She was going for help. I know she was. Charlie must have seen her on the way here. We had an argument. I said she was useless.’

The policewoman took a long deep breath and blew out a cloud of bemusement. ‘My colleagues are searching Bathory Basics in the village. I’ve had word that a man’s body has been found in the upstairs flat.’

My eyes banged shut and my heart truly sank inside me. ‘His dad.’

She leaned into me. I could smell her perfume—the same as our Geography teacher wore. ‘You saved four people’s lives today, including your own. Don’t you forget that. I’ve got to inform my colleagues, okay? I’ll be back in a tick.’

Four people’s lives? Tabby, Leon, Maggie and … Regan. ‘Regan,’ I said aloud. ‘I left her in the kitchen when I …’

‘Nash, I’m here,’ came a voice behind me and I looked to see Regan standing to the side of the ambulance, beaming as though I’d just called her up to collect a prize. She didn’t have a scratch on her.

‘Oh my God,’ I said, and gathered her in for a hug. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine. I’m fine. I saw it, Nash! I saw the—’

‘Don’t say it,’ I said. I led her away from the ambulance so we were out of earshot of the two paramedics. ‘Where?’

‘Through the kitchen window. When I escaped the oven, I ran for the woods and that’s when I saw it. I followed it, up through the Landscape Gardens and up to the Birdcage. It led me to safety, Nash. The Beast saved me!’

‘You saved yourself,’ I told her. ‘Listen, don’t tell the police about it.’

‘Why not? They’ll want to know where I went, won’t they?’

‘Yes, but leave that bit out. Just say you ran and hid. If they go looking for it, they might try to capture it or kill it. We wouldn’t want that to happen, would we? Not now that we know it doesn’t mean us any harm. Okay?’

She seemed sad, but she nodded. ‘It’s just something we know about.’

‘Yeah. Just you and me.’

‘It means I won’t be the hero for finding it though.’

‘We have to protect it, Regan. It’ll be our …’

‘Secret?’ she suggested.

‘No, I don’t like secrets,’ I said. ‘It’ll just be ours. Okay?’

She grinned widely. It looked strange on her face, but not unpretty. ‘Okay. What’s wrong with your neck?’

I couldn’t even feel there was anything wrong with my neck, until I swallowed and then I felt it. Jesus, did I feel it. I went to the back of my ambulance again and wrapped the foil cape around me. Both the paramedics were at the front of the ambulance. The man was talking into the radio by the steering wheel. The woman was fiddling about inside her medical bag. I looked through the windscreen. Dawn was breaking on the horizon. Something was breaking in me too. I kept thinking back to him, lying there on the library floor.

The blood spurting from his neck; a graceful fountain of red.

The sound as I plunged the pencil into his flesh.

The sound as I pulled the pencil back out and watched as his skin closed back around the hole I’d made.

I only remembered stabbing him once. Twenty-seven times? That wasn’t me. That
couldn’t
have been me.

I only remember watching as the last rattling breaths left his body. And I did nothing but sit there, watching, hoping.

I’d enjoyed it. The power was in my hands. I’d killed him. I’d stabbed him over and over and over and over again. His blood covered my face. Some of it had gone in my mouth. I could still taste him. And I’d sat there and watched him die.

What a monster I had inside me. And I never even knew it.

Another police car, or another ambulance, was coming down the drive. As it got closer, I could see there were no flashing blue lights. Maybe it was Clarice’s parents. Or Dianna’s mum.